Header Right

earn money online

The main reason people fail at online business is said to be because they quit too soon, without giving it a fair chance. The underlying reasons for this are that they (a) Believe there is some sort of magic about the Internet that will allow them to succeed by osmosis; (b) Want something for nothing, meaning they are not willing to really work at it. (c) Do not actually have a realistic plan of action that includes investing their time and effort; (d) Do not treat it seriously as they would a job.

Let’s examine each of these things in a little more depth.

(a) Belief in magic. It is true that some terminology may lead someone to feel that things will be a lot easier and faster than they really are. This is where normal people should employ whatever common sense and logic they may have. Understand that the statements are addressed to the public at large. There is a broad spectrum ranging from those with skills, resources and previous experience, all the way to people brand new to the Internet, computers and/or sales and marketing.

Many statements are telling us that it is POSSIBLE – and it is POSSIBLE for the first group who have experience. Does this say it is IMPOSSIBLE without it? No, not at all, but being realistic, they will need to accept that fact that they have to learn and get some experience in order for the eventuality of success to happen for them. If they are willing and able to accept this then they have a chance to succeed with an online business.

(b) Something for nothing. People may feel that they are doing all they need to do by joining an affiliate program and paying the monthly dues. However if nothing else is done to promote the business after that then it is the same as doing nothing. Having a link with an ID does absolutely nothing without promoting it aggressively by marketing and advertising.

Yet some people feel entitled to everyone else doing everything for them and they just sit back and wait for the money to roll in. They have a very long wait because without their active participation nothing will ever happen. They are very willing to accept anything that is free which is meant to help them get started. If they don’t see anything tangible at the end of the trial period they are out of there, often with very unkind things to say about the program when it did not produce magical results for them instantly.

The correct attitude for someone who is sincerely trying to start a business would be gratitude for the opportunity, and a real effort to make proper use of the resources that were shared with them in good faith. They need to understand reality and the fact that nobody achieves wealth without work other than lottery winners and heirs to fortunes. If it seems so effortless for the ‘guru’s with their sensational stories, you are not reading the part where they struggled uphill for years to achieve what they have now.

It is true some don’t elaborate on that so you have to be realistic in your own thinking to be sure you are not mislead. An important thing to realize is they were for the most part not born with ‘a silver spoon in their mouth’ – had no special privileges or superior intelligence – and they don’t owe you anything even if they did – other than to honor their promises and guarantees.

(c) A realistic plan. This would include having a definite business plan just in so far as what exactly you need to learn to do. You need to define in detail the whats, whens, hows and whys. What exact steps you need to take to do all the necessary things in conducting a professional business. Do you have what you need to do that? If not take steps to find out how to get it.

(d) Do not treat it seriously. You must be disciplined and focused if you want to achieve anything with your online business. You have to stay motivated even though you may not see any results at first. Just because you can work on your own time schedule does not mean skip it or put it off until ‘tomorrow’. You need to include a work schedule in your plan and be committed to it. Then work it out.

They say there ‘is no fear except fear itself’. People may have a fear of the unknown to begin with and likely are skeptical if not suspicious when they are in unfamiliar territory. In the case of a home business start-up, there are lots of areas that could become ‘deal breakers’. That is why it is doubly more important than ever that you are perceived as being honest and reliable to your prospects and customers.

It is a good idea if you focus on the areas where it may seem small or inconsequential but it actually is not, as far as building trust. You should always keep your word even if it doesn’t seem important; for example understand that there is a difference between 9:00am and 9:30am. If you set up an appointment online or otherwise, you need to be there on time. Stuff happens? Then just be sure to call BEFORE you are late to say that you have been delayed and will be there ASAP. Really make an effort to be there on time or as close as you can. It is actually very rude and disrespectful to keep someone waiting. Might as well start off your relationships on the right foot so that you build trust instead of disgust.

This being honest thing extends to your advertising and marketing techniques as well. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you stick to that rule you shouldn’t run into any problems with being perceived as trustworthy and reliable. An example here might be even something like saying a deal will end at 12:00am on Tuesday. A time deadline may be an effective ploy to get people to take action (the fear of missing out). However if they go to the site at 1:00am and it is still there, or a week from now, you have been caught in a lie. To someone you hope to do business with, they could feel you are less than genuine and that is not a good way to build a relationship of trust.

You can bend this just a little bit and still appear honest – for example at 12:00am post something to the effect that the time has been extended due to the huge response or slow response, and give the next deadline. The point is just don’t leave it there because there are too many people just looking for a reason to walk away and pronounce everything a scam. You are still saying what you mean and meaning what you say, it’s just bent a little. The perception is what counts and you are still attempting to be honest with them. Of course you want to change the deadline few and far between times – so maybe give it a broad range like a week rather than a specific hour.

Sometimes you ‘don’t get a second chance to make a first impression’. It is really shocking how skeptical people can turn the most innocent thing into a ‘scam’ — You don’t have phone support, therefore this means you must be part of a scam; maybe your customer service is a little slow in responding, therefore you must be a scammer. Even something that you said or printed that was misconstrued by them, you guessed it, that means you must be a scammer; how about they expected something from you, but that is not your policy or protocol and you try politely to explain that, but to no avail, this makes you a crook since you are not doing business on their terms. Nothing much can be done about people like this, but do what you can to ‘take the high road’.

For normal home business start-up relationships once you establish yourself as someone who is friendly, open and reasonably honest, then you can begin to build trust which can mean everything to your new business’ bottom-line, including repeat business from loyal customers and peers. Building trust is what you want to strive for in developing your home business. Even if what you are selling is one-time-only, there is still much credence given to those word-of-mouth recommendations, so you want to build your reputation in the right direction!

Be honest. You could use some extra money, right? With things being what they are these days, we are mostly just grateful to have an income at all sometimes. Knowing what can happen in a recession, etc., has been a wake-up call for lots of people. Even when you are doing an excellent job, even when you have been with a company for years, there is no real job security. Things can happen that are even beyond the control of your employer and sometimes they have no choice for whatever reason to ‘downsize’. This is the reason you should start now to earn extra money online from home: ‘Just in case’.

In the meantime, life goes on. Things catch your eye or you remember how you always wanted to have something or to go somewhere, but you never can afford anything extra anymore. Most people are living paycheck-to-paycheck and again, they are just grateful to have a job at all. In this environment it is unlikely people will just switch jobs because they can make a little more money. So it can get almost depressing to realise how hard we work day in and day out and yet we can’t afford to really enjoy some of the ‘finer’ things in life!

You know what though? That is not really so true. You can definitely control the situation and make more money than your employer is able or willing to pay you. If you are really determined to ‘get ahead’ then why not consider how you might earn extra money from home in your spare time? What spare time? You will find it if you look for it. If you really want to make it happen you will somehow carve out some time and space to start looking at ways you can earn money online from home.

If you have a couple hours in the evening and/or on weekends you could start the research and planning on what you could set up that would be more or less on “autopilot” (eventually). It’s “more or less” because it does take time to set it up and get it to run smoothly — and even then you have to remain somewhat engaged to keep on top of things. There is no ‘asleep at the wheel’ when it comes to earning income anywhere. You have to really focus even if it is just for those few hours.

One of the easiest online businesses to get started in (the least work, least expense and least experience required) would be affiliate marketing. This is because for a small monthly fee you get so much from an affiliate program. They are not all created equal but for the most part you should find one that includes resources as well as some level of training that would give you the necessary information for marketing and advertising (promoting) your business. They all usually provide graphics (images) and web pages for you to use, handle support for your customer’s questions, and process the actual sales transactions that you can earn commissions from.

There are several conceptual issues that seem to confuse people who try to build a business where they can work at home. Literally the word ‘w-o-r-k’ seems to confuse some people from different perspectives. While working at home is not a ‘j-o-b’ you still need to take it seriously and actually do the w-o-r-k.

Some will balk at a business plan the minute they realise that it does involve work. They want so to believe that they can get something for nothing, that there is a magic sauce, that they can just posture as a home business entrepreneur and thereby attract money.

While it is true we may have an aversion to work because of hostile work environments and the jobs we have all had to take in order to survive, there is never an excuse for laziness or slacking, and it really can be fatal to a new home business because it will never get off the ground.

At first we do need all the information we can get, but there comes a point where we need to put that information into action. Don’t use the excuse that you can’t actually do anything yet because you don’t know enough. Do what you can as soon as you can, you will learn more as you go. While you need a plan there is nothing better than taking action when it comes to starting a business.

While we do need to learn, we likely will not make money just from learning, but only from employing the information we acquire to promote and develop a business. That is why it is so important that we don’t get stuck at square one while we are learning. It is true that people get stage fright and they have a fear of failure. There is a great saying to keep in mind and that is that ‘the road to success is littered with failures’. Meaning, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep moving forward, on to the next quest.

The key to success is not giving up. Keep trying. Try something different. Go about things in a different way. Check (and fix) your attitude if necessary. This might be the most difficult task you will have when you start a business at home. You must be determined so that you won’t be affected negatively when you do not see tangible results right away (which is the norm).

It takes time to develop business, and you need to be very aggressive about it. Never ‘rest on your laurels’. You have to stay motivated no matter if you are tired, dejected, busy or even not feeling well. While it may be more difficult to go to a job when we don’t feel good, we would have to be seriously ill not to be able to log on to our computers that are right there in our home office. Even if all you can squeeze out is an hour. Spend the time wisely.

There is so much to learn when you first start trying to build a home business. It is of course natural to make mistakes since we are only human but then some mistakes are worse than others because they can permanently damage our reputation.

Some examples of the more serious issues are:

‘Ethical’ eMail Marketing is permission-based. That means that we never send anything to anyone who has not first requested information (“opted” in), and we have the documentation to protect ourselves from complaints. “Opt-in” means that they have willingly submitted their email address to you, which is giving you permission.

This documentation can include the person’s IP address, email address, date and time that the person opted-in. The person may ‘forget’ they requested the information and start marking your messages as spam. If the problem is escalated you need to be able to prove that you did not knowingly send anything that was not legal (requested).

Too many spam complaints can cause you a lot of trouble and depending on how severe the problem becomes, you can lose your domain, your hosting account and/or your autoresponder account. Spam is very illegal and that goes not only for the marketers that may send unsolicited advertising, but also to any system or application that allows the crime to be committed using their resources.

So this means that your providers, while they do not want to lose your business, are forced to drop you so that they are not seen as a ‘rogue’ system and lose their reputation with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and ESPs (eMail Service Providers), etc., not to mention ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) – who made the law against spam and enforce it.

Another extremely important issue is being completely ethical and truthful in your advertising and dealing with your prospects and customers. Never make guarantees that you are not prepared to honor – for example if you guarantee someone will make X number of dollars; because if they don’t, then you are liable because you promised.

Of course what this means is do not guarantee anything you do not control. For real, because you would need to take that amount of money out of your pocket and give it to them to cover your ‘guarantee’, otherwise it would be ‘false advertising’.

You should never guarantee any amount of money or any amount of time. You do not know the future or what that person will do in terms of how much effort they will make that would determine how much they make or by when.

Another serious legal issue is ‘bait and switch’ – that means, for one example that you advertise one thing and then do another. For instance if your ad says someone will receive A,B, and C for X number of dollars. After they pay X, what they receive is not A,B and C but only A and they are told they need to give you more money to get B and C. Or it may be that A,B and/or C do not do what you promised and they need D,E or F to make it work.

Still another example is if you offer a full refund then you need to give the refund promptly. You can qualify that for example using a time constraint ’30-day money back guarantee’ or ‘refund is minus administrative, handling or shipping fee’. State exactly what you are prepared to honor.

Be very careful not to ‘bend’ the truth in these ways as there are lots of people who will take you to task for being less than completely honest. ‘Mean what you say and say what you mean’. The success of your business does depend on your reputation and the Internet and ‘social’ networks make it very easy for ‘the word’ to get around, whether positive or negative!

Although at times you may wonder if it is really possible, and even if you have been trying for a while but have not seen results yet, know that money is actually being earned as we speak. Many people are making money on the Internet. Just know that it wasn’t by magic or that they necessarily had any advantages that you don’t have. Hence, there is no reason why you can’t do it too!

The trick is to remain undaunted in your determination and make consistent effort. Anyone can do either of those two things. Of course you then must give it all time to gel and it will eventually produce results if you keep it up. This requires patience and faith. The reason we don’t hear more success stories, is that we are a culture of instant gratification. If we don’t see proof right off the bat, then we just give up and blame something or someone else besides ourselves.

Starting a business on the Internet is much faster, easier and less expensive than starting an offline business. However, there is really no magic that will create instant wealth without the effort. “Success is still spelled w-o-r-k”. It is highly unlikely anyone could develop a business without working at it patiently over time. How long it will take you depends on many factors, but is primarily determined by how much effort you are willing to expend.

It really can take something that is inside you that you have not yet found. It can be described as the ability to hold up even beyond what you think you are capable of. It’s that extra little push. We are mostly accustomed to working X number of hours for X amount of money as with a job. When you have your own business it is quite different. You may work many hours without seeing any results. This is where you will need to have self-motivation to keep pushing forward. You will find that if you sit back and wait for something to happen it will be a long wait for nothing.

When you work from the comfort of your home it doesn’t seem so daunting to be working long hours. While it is very possible to see some results right away, that is not a given. Consequently, it is best to begin building a business while you have some other source of income. The very nature of marketing is and always has been about building and sustaining momentum over time for best results. Being online doesn’t change that fact even though everything is so much more fun when working at home.